Once Departed

Chapter Nine

Quint was staring at the other man. “You’ve got your genders mixed,” he told him. “He, not she.” Albrecht Stroehlein mustered sufficient courage to sneer in superiority. “Ah, my American friend, you are not so knowledgeable as you would pretend, eh? You do not even know that Doktor Grete Stahlecker is a woman, eh?” He tapped himself, on the upper part of his belly.

“I have known Grete Stahlecker since 1921, eh? It was I who introduced her to the Führer. I, Albrecht Stroehlein. No one else, nicht? Even then she was noted in her field. Even then, a great scientist. If she had been a younger woman, Hitler himself might have taken her to bed, eh? Instead of finally that wishy-washy, as the British say, Eva Braun. I tell you, if Grete Stahlecker was here tonight, I would know Grete Stahlecker.” He snapped pudgy fingers. “Like that.”

Quint Jones felt dazed. He didn’t know why. It had just never occurred to him that the misty doctor was a woman. There was no particular reason. He muttered some excuse to the German, and went seeking Mike Woolman.

Mike was standing, glass in hand, listening to Ferd Dempsey and some American air force officer who were arguing bullfighting. Neither of them knew what they were talking about. Quint, come to think of it, had never met an American who knew anything about bullfighting with the possible exception of Johnny Short, who was a novittero.

The American columnist took Mike aside. “Listen,” he said. “This Doktor Stahlecker is a woman.”

Mike looked at him as though he had slipped his clutch. “So what?”

Quint stared at him. “I thought she was a man. I mean, that he was.”

Mike patted him on the arm. “Look, friend. Why don’t you go easy on the sauce? Of course, Doctor Grete Stahlecker was, or is, as the case may be, a woman. She was Adolf’s personal surgeon. She saved his life.”

“Okay,” Quint said. “Forget it. Nobody bothered to tell me.”

Mike shrugged hugely and went off for another drink, saying over his shoulder, “This whole idea flopped. The party’s beginning to break up. How long should we stick around?” But he was gone before the columnist could answer.

Quint looked down into his own glass, knocked the drink back and decided to get another. The idea had flopped was right. He had half a mind to hang one on.

Marty Dempsey wavered up to him, her glass so full that she was spilling the drink on Marylyn’s carpet. Quint winced. The Dempsey’s didn’t give a damn about spilling drinks on carpets. Either their own, or anyone else’s. The difference was they could afford to buy new ones. He doubted if Marylyn could.

Quint said disgustedly, “Pet, you aren’t Grete Stahlecker, are you?”

Marty closed one eye carefully. “Dahling, I’ve never seen you so stoned. Never. Look real close. I’m… don’t tell me. I’m Martha. Martha McCarthy. That’s who.”

“Don’t look now,” Quint said. “But you’re Martha Dempsey. Remember? You married Ferdinand about twenty or thirty years ago.”

“Oh, yeah,” Marty said vaguely. She took him in suspiciously. “You’re not as stoned as you act.” She concentrated for a moment then said, “I gotta go to the little girl’s,” and wandered off.

Quint looked after her, wondering why he associated with these people. What in the hell could the likes of Ferd and Marty Dempsey possibly do for him?

Some of the guests were leaving. It never had developed into much of a party, in spite of Marylyn’s shining-bright efforts. She just wasn’t cut out to be hostess for this type of a gang. Besides, they had all evidently come expecting some sort of excitement. That had been the rumor Mike and Quint had spread around. On the face of it, the excitement hadn’t developed. The party was melting.

Ferd Dempsey, swaying—his once heroic proportions, now gone to fat, threatening to collapse—held high his glass. “We’ll all go tasca-hopping!” he proclaimed. “Go bar hopping, pub crawling, saloon slinking. We’ll all go on down to Chicote’s and stan’ in front, out on the street, and I’ll give ’em a recitation.”

Ferd, Quint decided cynically, was at the stage where he was going to render Omar Khayyam. To render means to tear apart. And sure enough. Here it came. “And, as the Clock crew, those who stood before The tavern shouted—’Open then the Door!’ You know how little while we have to stay, And, once departed, may return no more.”

Quint Jones could just see Ferd and the rest standing in front of Chicote’s shouting quatrains from the Rubaiyat. Come to think of it, though, there was a certain appropriateness about it all. Omar Khayyam, the patron saint of the hedonist. All over again, Quint Jones wondered what he was doing associating with this crowd. How had he ever gotten into this rut?

Ferd’s idea grew on the rest A tasca crawl was in order. Carry the party onto the town. The remaining guests sought their things.

Mike Woolman was one of the last to leave. His eyes went from Quint to Marylyn, who was seeing someone out, and then back again. He said, “So, you’ve finally made it, eh?”

Quint scowled at him. “Come again?”

“Never mind,” Mike grunted. “I suppose it’s got to happen to her some day. Why not you?”

“Get lost, Buster,” Quint growled at him.

“See you around,” Mike said without inflection. “Good old Joe Garcia wants to talk to me about something.”

“He probably wants to know what, if anything, we found out at this party.”

“Well, I’ll tell him we found out a nice round zero.” Mike muttered. He turned to leave.

Something was churning in Quentin Jones’ brain. Something brought to mind by Ferd. The last two lines of his quatrain went over and over through the columnist’s head… how little while we have to stay, and, once departed, may return no more.

He wandered back to the bar and poured himself another short brandy. Actually, he hadn’t drunk much tonight. He had kept himself sober, so that his mind would be keen enough to pick up the slightest hint of a clue. Much good it had done him.

Marylyn said, from behind him, “They’re all gone, Quentin.”

“Oh? Oh, yeah. I was just thinking.”

She sat on the extremely large divan which dominated one side of the room. “Gracious! They drank so much. And were so loud. Thank goodness no one lives below.”

He put his glass down, untouched, and sat beside her. Still thoughtful. How little time we have to stay, and, once departed, may return no more.

“What were you thinking about… Quentin?”

He looked at her. “A lot of things. For once, what a worthless gang this is. Except for Mike, and yourself, who among them works? Do any work at all? Who among them has an iota of ideal? Who has a dream, an ambition—beyond getting over a hangover so he can start hanging a new one on? I think I’m a little disgusted with myself for remaining in this atmosphere as long as I have.”

She said, urgently, “That’s what I’ve been telling you, Quentin. You’re a man of destiny. I knew it from the first time I met you. Even before, when I read some of your columns. I don’t agree with all of them, of course. Perhaps not even most. But you haven’t found yourself yet. When you do…” She had run out of breath in her earnestness.

Quint looked at her ruefully from the side of his eyes, then stared unseeing into a corner of the room. “I got a letter today from a new political party starting up in the States. They call themselves the Liberal Party.”

“Liberal Party.” Marylyn made a face.

He looked at her. “What ever happened to the liberals in the States? Back when I was a kid, during the depression, everybody was a liberal. There were darn few brave enough to call themselves conservatives, and to be a reactionary was like being in cahoots with the devil.”

He thought about it. “Today, the term is rapidly disappearing in the States. To say you’re a liberal now means you’re a wide-eyed do-gooder. A wooly-head who signs petitions for peace, and marches in anti-segregation parades. I remember a speech Roosevelt once made…”

Marylyn made a face again, but moved slightly nearer to him, listening.

“… in which he defined reactionary, radical, liberal and conservative. For an example, he took an old bridge crossing a stream. The radical comes along and says the bridge is no longer safe, it should be torn down and a new one built utilizing the most modern methods. The conservative comes along and says, the bridge is fine, just the way it is, don’t touch it. The liberal comes along and suggests various repairs to patch it up so that it can continue to be used. And the reactionary comes along and says tear it down, and we’ll cross the stream the old way, jumping from rock to rock.”

Marylyn laughed hesitantly, after looking into his face and seeing she was expected to.

Quint said, “Actually, there’s little meaning to be found in the name of political parties nowadays. There’s hardly a country in Europe that doesn’t have parties that work the word Christian into their names. The Christian Democrats, the Christian Socialists, the Christian Republicans, and so on and so forth.” He chuckled sarcastically. “Have you ever heard of a political party really based on Christian principles?”

Marylyn said, “I see what you mean. In Germany in the early 1920s the people liked the word socialist. They weren’t too clear what it meant, but they liked the idea. So when Hitler’s movement began to develop he called it National Socialism, although, of course, the Fuhrer had no sympathy with socialism at all.”

He put an arm around her, and drew her nearer. She looked up at him suddenly. “Quint! That’s it. This is your chance. What difference does it make what the name of the party is? This is your opportunity to get in on the ground floor.”

He pursed his lips and chuckled wryly. “They wanted me to run for Senator from my state.”

“Quint! It’s your chance! Why, in six months you’d be head of the party.”

Still chuckling, he drew her closer, and ran a finger down along a slight scar near her temple. He scowled and said, “How did you get this?”

“What? Oh. An auto accident when I was a little girl.”

how… little… time… we… have… to stay… and… once… departed… may… return… no… more…

He murmured, astonished by it all, “But that’s the whole thing, isn’t it? The effort to stay on. The effort to return, though it all should have ended.”

She frowned up at him. “I… I don’t know what you mean, Quentin.”

“Ann Asian and her H3 vitamin,” he murmured. “She’s probably a comparative amateur.”

“Quentin,” she said.

He looked at her strangely, “You’ve obviously had your face lifted, probably more than once. How old are you, really, Grete?”

She drew back from him,

He said, “How long did you really live in Border, Nebraska? Just long enough to establish a phoney identity?”

“Quentin! Don’t attempt to judge me… not yet. You don’t understand. I lived many years in the United States. For a time I attended school there.”

He was nodding. “Back before the first World War, I imagine. How old are you, Grete Stahlecker?”

Her face went strange. She had removed herself from his enveloping arm, but now she seized his hand tightly. “I am seventy-two years old, Quentin!”

Quentin Jones stared at her, unbelieving, even though at long last he knew.

“Quentin, don’t you see what that means? You too can be all but immortal. You are a man of destiny, like the Führer was a man of destiny. We… Herr Ferencsik and I… can search out such weaknesses as your present body might have. Seek them out, and eliminate them. Is your heart potentially that organ of your body which will first fail? We will find you a strong heart, Quentin. Any weakness we can change.”

He looked into her face, and through it, into her all. Into the deepest recesses of the psyche.

“So,” he said softly. “Professor Ferencsik is with you. And together you are to create your superman.”

“Yes, yes,” she hurried. “He is with me. Here, here in this house.”

“And he believes in this same dream you have?”

“Yes, of course,” her eyes shifted only slightly. “A superman to lead the world to a single government To make all earth one strong State. It was Führer’s dream, and Alfred Rosenberg’s. It is only that Herr Ferencsik is impractical. He doesn’t realize that there must be a master race, we Teutons and Anglo-Saxons. The inferior races will serve us.”

Her grip on his arm tightened urgently. Her face had a fey quality, a wild quality.

Quint said, almost gently, “So, you would make a superman of me?” His face twisted grimly. “As you did Martin Bormann, Grete?”

“Bormann, he is nothing! A clod. True, at first I thought I could make him the new Fuhrer. But there was still much for me to learn, and now, with my new knowledge, and with the help of Herr Professor Ferencsik…”

Quint said, “Grete, this question keeps coming up. Why was it necessary to burn Hitler’s body, there outside the Reich Chancellery, after he had committed suicide?”

Her eyes went strange, shifted strangely, but her voice came, as though reciting. “It was necessary that we burn it so that the Führer’s enemies would never know that the body had been mutilated, that the brain had been removed.”

The cold went through Quentin Jones as never before in all his life. The next words were hard to keep level. “And whose brain would be in this renovated body of mine? My jazzed up new superman body which would last a few hundred years?”

She shook her head, and again her hand tightened urgently on his arm, and her eyes bore into his in complete earnestness. “Quentin, you need not fear. Do not be silly. It would be your own brain. Your personality. A simple operation or two, a simple grafting…”

“To… what… extent… would… you… replace… my… own… brain… with… that… of… your… once… Fuhrer…”

“But just a little bit. The very seat of his genius. The phyche, the ego…”

A new voice from one of the rear doors said wealdy, “She’s mad, of course. Doktor Stahlecker is mad. A genius, perhaps, but mad. She has showed me the portions of the brain she thinks possible to replace in your skull. They are nothing, after all these years, but mush. Organic, meaningless mush. If she is allowed to operate on you, Quentin Jones, you will become as Martin Bormann has become.”

Marylyn Worth—Doktor Grete Stohlecker—was on her feet, glaring at the intruder. She spun back to Quint. “But you can see! Look, I am younger than twenty years ago. Look at my face! My body! Now I am even beautiful, as I was never beautiful before, my Führer! Yes, yes! Now you understand. You will be the new Führer, and I will be your bride. All these years, my Fuhrer, I have kept myself for you.?”

His horror must have reflected in his face.

She looked at him. Shook her head in incomprehension. “But…” she whimpered, “… So long, so very long.” She shook her head.

And then as though by horrible miracle, her face began to break up. The blondness of hair seemed to go dull, as though from gold to corroding brass. The fire went from blueness of eye, and they dimmed to aged grey. Her shoulders slumped forward, in an older woman’s slump of age. Her mouth went slack, her face pinched, and her seventy years and more of life showed through.

Nicolas Ferencsik had leaned back against the wall, resting from whatever ordeal he had been through these past several days.

And through the door through which he had come only a few minutes before, lurched the creature of Doktor Grete Stahlecker’s manufacture.

In first glance it was a man of possibly forty, the body well formed, the face of a certain heavy handsomeness. But second look branded it hulk. A meaningless, nonthinking hulk that walked. Empty of eye. Empty of brain.

Its Zombi-eyes went to its master.

Suddenly she galvanized. She pointed at Quentin Jones, who long since had come to his feet. She shrieked. “Take him. Take him to the laboratory! He doesn’t realize what I offer. I will prove everything!”

The thing’s dull eyes came back to Quint and there was the dim, faintest gleam of pleasure. It lurched forward, the big strong hands coming up from its sides where until now they had dangled, lifeless.

“Run!” Ferencsik blurted, as though with his last strength.

Without thought, Quent Jones went into the Zenkutsu-dachi lunge position. The rear knee straight, the front knee bent so that the knee cap was directly over the arch of the foot. His body weight was evenly distributed between both feet.

The monster’s movements were deceptively fast. It came in, soft gurgling sounds emanating from its throat, its hands forward to grasp.

Quint exhaled, with a piercing Kiai shout of “Zut” and darted forward, without conscious thought going into the tenth Kata. He blocked the lunging creature’s right hand with a hard blow of his own right, grasped the wrist with the thumb pointed upward, and pivoted on his left foot to the right. His back was to the growling, muttering thing. He kept his hold of the right wrist, raised the other’s hand high as he drew the body closer to his back. With his left hand he struck brutally into its groin. He seized the peach, as his Jap instructor had called it, and brought his left arm down, holding the left wrist now, over his right shoulder and across the chest. He pulled down on the thing’s right arm as he pulled up on the groin, and threw it over his shoulder.

Automatically, Quint went into the Hachiji-dachi, spreadout position, but his face went blank when he saw the thing roll out of the punishing karate kata. It was the first time in his several years of practicing the art, that Quentin Jones had ever seriously performed the tenth kata. It should have resulted in at least complete elimination of the opponent; it could have resulted in death.

But the creature was coming to its feet again, still moving in deceptive speed, considering its appearance of clumsiness. There was spittle at the side of its mouth, but it still mewled as though in pleasure.

“Take him! Take him! The laboratory.” Somewhere in the background Doktor Grete Stahlecker was screaming, unheard by either.

It came again, its hands clawing for a grip. Let it get its hands on this shrieking, dancing opponent, and it knew that then all would be over. Then the master would have her wish. Then would come the good feeling, perhaps. Perhaps the master would allow him to do that which brought the good feeling.

Quint, in desperation, decided upon the nineteenth kata, screamed his Kiai yell, and blurred into the motions of chopping the other’s kidneys, stamping his left knee pit, and finally throwing him again clear across the room, crushing a straight chair to splinters in the process.

Quint was breathing deeply now. Nothing living should be able to take this punishment. Nothing living. He assumed the Kiba-dachi straddle position in desperation. If the thing ever got its hands on him properly…

He had no illusion now about Grete Stahlecker being able to control it, now that it was in the heat of mortal combat. Nothing could control it. Of that he was sure.

The monster came lumbering in, perhaps more slowly now, or perhaps that was Quentin Jones’ wishful thinking. He hit it with the eleventh Kata, Okinawa style, attacking the groin again, chopping its shoulder in a judo chop, then darting away.

The thing was shaking its head and staring at him stupidly.

The Doktor was screaming something else now. Something Quint couldn’t make out. He couldn’t stand this pace. The thing was heavy to work with. It must have gone well over two hundred pounds. And it was fast. He had to use top energies, razor edge reflexes, to keep way from it and still punish it.

He moved in again, feeling his weariness. He must take the fight to the foe. Must finish it off, or he was sunk. He could feel his strength melting. He tried the twenty-fourth Kata. Something he had seen professional instructors enact, but which he had never tried.

He screamed, “Zut!” throwing a left block against the other’s left wrist, grabbing the outside of its wrist and applying a temporary wrist lock. He kicked into its groin again with a left forward kick, and with his right hand came down hard with a judo chop to its neck. Still holding the wrist he pivoted behind the now squealing thing and stamped its left knee pit with his right foot, sending it sprawling.

He resumed his position, seemingly at his ease and awaiting further combat. The thing might not know, but Quint Jones was at the end of his resources. All his training told him that he had done sufficient to have killed two or three men. But the thing seemed still strong.

Grete Stahlecker, her face livid, her full madness upon her, was screaming at the creature. “Kill, kill! I order you. Kill him, kill him. It is your master who says, kill, kill! ”

It was on its knees, breathing deep, shuddering breaths. Its eyes went from Quint to the screaming madwoman, and then back again. It had ceased, long since, to mewl its pleasure. It looked into Quint’s face, looked into the easy karate stance he had assumed. Far, far down, he knew he had met defeat, that he could never conquer this new master.

“Kill him!” Grete Stahlecker shrilled.

Her voice irritated the thing. Could she not see? He could not obey. It was impossible to obey. This new master prevailed. Her high voice irritated him beyond bearing.

It lurched to his feet and came toward her.

“No,” Ferencsik said. The Professor had collapsed into a chair. Now he shook his head. “No. She is one of the world’s greatest—”

Quint’s eyes suddenly widened, as he caught the significance. He moved forward… too late.

She never knew. Her vision blurred by hate and hysteria, the thing was upon her and had finished with her, before her hate-fuddled brain could have comprehended. Its clawed hands ripped out her throat, beat in her skull, before she knew its purpose, could comprehend its purpose.

It turned away from her, and sunk to its knees, its hand out stretched toward Quentin Jones as though in supplication. As though supplicating a new master.

Quint, sickened, moved forward, his right hand went up and chopped down, in a single judo blow to the back of the neck.

Quint never remembered, later, how he got to the couch. Perhaps Nicolas Ferencsik had helped him there, half carried him there. All he knew was that reaction, a form of shock, set in, and the black ebbed over him.

He felt, eventually, a stinging of the face. Shook his head. Finally managed, “Cut it out, damn it!”

He could hear Mike Woolman’s voice. “He’s coming out.”

He felt another slap on his cheek, and opened his eyes. “Listen,” he growled. “You do that once more, and I’ll slug you.”

He sat up, and shook his head. “What happened?”

“That’s a good question,” Mike snorted.

Jose Garcia Mendez was there too, and a couple of what were obviously plainclothes men. In fact, Quint vaguely recognized one of them as having been in his apartment several days ago when he was being suspected of Digby’s death.

Garcia looked about the shambles of the room. He said, mildly, “We were hoping you’d tell us, Quint old chum. The professor has clammed up.”

Quint closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “Somebody get me a brandy, huh?” When it came, he downed it, stiff wristed. “Where’d you all come from?”

Garcia said, “Your American private eye stories to the contrary, the police do sometimes get results. We’ve been checking out everybody even remotely concerned with this matter. Even our square little schoolteacher, Marylyn Worth. So it turns out that not only does she rent this king-size apartment, supposedly just for herself alone, but the apartment down below as well. So what does an old maid school teacher want with this much space? So we took a look-see, and down below we found one of the most elaborate laboratories in Madrid. With some rather gruesome specimens in the deep freeze. So we thought we might ask Miss Worth a few leading questions.”

Mike bit out, “She was really Doktor Stahlecker, wasn’t she? And that thing…” he motioned with a thumb.

Jose Garcia said, “What a stink this is going to cause. For everybody. Everybody concerned.” He looked at Quint. “Believe it or Ripley, chum. We didn’t know these two characters were in the country. Obviously, they were both eligible for the nut factory.”

Quint rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Let me think.”

Mike said happily, “What a story.”

Garcia winced.

Quint looked at his newspaperman friend. “Considering all the ramifications, maybe the story isn’t quite what you thought. Not quite so complicated. There was a madman…” he looked at Garcia “… we can’t avoid that part of it Too many people are involved. Including his last victim, an American school teacher named Marylyn Worth. But the police caught him at that point and killed him when he tried to escape. That’s the story.”

“Hey, wait a minute!” Mike protested. “You’re not going to get away with that. What happened to Martin Bormann?”

Quint looked at the dead thing on the floor, and shuddered inwardly. “Martin Bormann must have died a long time ago,” he murmured.

“Oh, yeah? And Doktor Grete Stahlecker? You’re not going to louse up the story of the century.”

Quint looked at him. “You’d have a hard time proving that poor girl over there was actually a woman of some seventy years, Mike. Especially in view of the fact that not even Albrecht Stroehlein recognized her. Whether it was because her seeming youth threw him off, I don’t know. Perhaps it was plastic surgery. Whatever, you’d have a tough time proving to your editors this faatastic yarn of Bormann and Stahlecker.”

Mike was plaintive. “What’s your point, Quint? Why not back me up on this?”

The columnist looked at Garcia. “Brett-Home, Digby and Nuriyev were all wrong. They weren’t dealing with a potential try at getting Nazis back into command of West Germany. They were dealing with a mad woman, and a brainless creature, both of whom we ought to have the decency to pity. Both of them should have—and really did—die in that bunker with Hitler, Goebbels and the dreams of the Third Reich. Why give the world one more propaganda item to jitter over? And why louse up Spain’s reputation to the point of sending a few hundred thousand tourists looking for some other bargain paradise? I think you just better make the most of a Jack the Ripper type story, Mike. You’ll have a world beat on it.”

Garcia looked at him. “Thanks, Quint. I suppose you know we’ll be tearing up this persona non grata thing?”

Quint Jones shrugged. His mouth twisted cynically. “I’ll be leaving anyway. I’m off to some island, or something, where I can just sit and think awhile. I have some planning of my life to do. And I don’t think it’s going to involve either writing snide columns, or going into politics.”

The End